Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond

•In a
disturbing decision, public radio’s Radiolab (WVXU-FM 8 p.m. Sundays)
gave Cincinnatian Phil Heimlich critical control over its March 5
program on Phil’s dad, Henry Heimlich.

Phil
arranged the interview with the aging physician, for whom the Heimlich
Maneuver is named. However, producer Pat Walters had to promise to
exclude the voice of Phil’s estranged younger brother, Peter, from any
subsequent broadcast.

Peter is a scathing critic of their father’s therapeutic claims for the Maneuver and more recent medical experiments.

Phil
told Curmudgeon that he feared Walters would ask their father about the
troubled family relationships. “Like any son, I’m somewhat protective
of him,” Phil said. “He’s 93 . . . We don’t let just anybody come up and
interview him.”

Peter told Curmudgeon that he was unaware of this bargain when he cooperated with Walters for the Radiolab story.

I
have no trouble with Phil’s setting conditions for arranging the
interview. My beef is with Radiolab. It could have refused. Similarly,
I’m not going into Heimlich’s therapeutic theories and claims; I’m
writing about Radiolab’s handling of the story.

I’m
troubled by Radiolab’s willingness to silence an important critic and a
source of its information in exchange for access to the elder Heimlich.
Further, if Walters failed to tell Peter about his deal with Phil,
that’s unethical, especially since Walters told Peter, “I want you to
speak for yourself.”

Peter
elaborated in a recent email to Curmudgeon: “I was first approached by
Radiolab last August when they asked to interview me for broadcast. I
wasn't informed that, five months earlier, they'd cut the censorship
deal, so they obtained my interview under false pretenses. Further, in
the following months, Radiolab producer Pat Walters took up hours of my
time, encouraging me to provide him with information and documents. I
only learned about the censorship deal a couple weeks ago, when the
program disclosed it on their website. If I'd known that Radiolab was
this underhanded, I wouldn't have given them a minute of my time -- and
I'd encourage other sources to keep their distance.”

Over the years, Peter has dealt with lots of reporters. I asked, "Have you encountered this kind of deal before?"

Peter responded, “I've never heard of a deal like this . . . and how many other Radiolab stories have included deals like this?”

Radiolab’s
website includes a link to the 25-minute program, including the
interview with Heimlich. Radiolab’s website text says:

“In
the 1970s, choking became national news: thousands were choking to
death, leading to more accidental deaths than guns. Nobody knew what to
do. Until a man named Henry Heimlich came along with a big idea. Since
then, thousands and thousands — maybe even millions — have been
rescued by the Heimlich maneuver. Yet the story of the man who invented
it may not have such a happy ending.

“Producer
Pat Walters wouldn't be here without the Heimlich maneuver — it saved
his life when he was just 11 years old. And one day he started wondering
- who was Heimlich, anyway? And how did he come up with his choking
remedy? Pat had always kinda assumed Heimlich died in the mid-1800s. Not
so. The man is very much alive: he's 93 years old, and calls
Cincinnati, Ohio, home.”

Given
the conflict of interest, letting choking survivor Walters do the
interview was a mistake. Here are the guts of Radiolab’s online
Producer’s Note:

“We made some minor changes to this story that do not alter the substance.

“(W)e
removed the audio of Peter Heimlich, Henry Heimlich’s son, from the
version now on the site. When we approached Henry’s other son Phil to
arrange an interview with his father, one of Phil’s conditions was that
we not air audio of Peter. We thought he’d waived that provision in a
subsequent conversation but he contends he did not. So we are honoring
the original request.”

The
version available online begins with a light-hearted exchange among
Radiolab personalities in their WNYC studio of New York Public Radio.
The conversation between Walters and Henry Heimlich at Heimlich’s home
maintains that chummy tone.

Then
Walters shifts to controversies over Heimlich’s Maneuver to resuscitate
drowning victims and other medical theories. Walters also interviews
experts who disagree with Heimlich. When Walters lets Heimlich speak
for himself, the physician accuses critics of jealousy and
self-interest.

Walters
lets the American Red Cross explain why it (quietly) abandoned decades
of support for the Maneuver as the first response to choking and
returned common backslaps.

“Nonsense,” Heimlich responded.

The
Red Cross also abandoned Heimlich’s name for its maneuver. Now, it’s
“abdominal thrusts.” Heimlich says abdominal thrusts are not the same as
his Maneuver and he’s offended by the whole affair.

Peter — who provided emails from which I worked — continues to press Radiolab
on its decision to erase his voice from its broadcast. Its latest
response refers him to the program’s original online statements.

•Stunning,
avoidable reporting mistakes followed the Boston Marathon bombing. They
began when the New York Post said a Saudi man was hospitalized, under
guardand might be a bomber. Days later, as the hunt ended, CNN said
the captured younger suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was driven away by
police. CNN said Tsarnaev was not wounded or his wounds were so slight
that no ambulance was required. Wrong. He left in an ambulance; his
wounds were so serious that it was unclear when he would speak to
interrogators or appear in court.

•Was
there a gun battle after a Watertown resident saw the wounded man in
his boat and called police? Some media say no gun was found or the
19-year-old didn’t shoot.

•Speaking of mistakes, Businessinsider.com
described another blunder when reporters didn’t name sources or verify
leaks. “According to a source at CNN, the network was the first to
report that a suspect had been identified. Anchor John King sent in a
report around 1 p.m. that a source ‘briefed’ on the investigation had
told King a positive identification had been made. CNN Washington bureau
chief Sam Feist approved that report, according to the source.

“According
to the source, who was reviewing internal email logs, Fran Townsend was
the first at the network to say that an arrest had been made. ‘As I
think everyone knows, we really fucked up. No way around it,’ the source
said.

“The
source said that the network's email network went quiet for a 15-minute
period shortly after the retraction — ‘so people [were] either being
more cautious or getting yelled at.’

“Townsend's
report came around the same time as other outlets, including the
Associated Press and the Boston Globe, also reported an arrest, so it is
not clear whether CNN was the first to make the mistake . . .
Wednesday's false arrest reports also drew a scathing rebuke from the FBI,
which urged the press ‘to exercise caution and attempt to verify
information through appropriate official channels before reporting’."

This
is shabby journalism. CNN went with a report attributed to someone who
had been briefed by someone who knew something. No names. No
identifiable links to investigation. Simply assertions. We could have
waited until CNN verified or debunked the report but editors fear that
hesitation can drive viewers to other, less scrupulous sources. At least
Businessinsider.com appeared accurate in its use of its unnamed CNN sources.

•Social
media — better called anti-social media in the aftermath of the
marathon bombings - spread so much misinformation and falsely accused so
many young men that the FBI had to release images of its suspects: the Tsarnaev brothers. It was the only way to protect wrongly accused men
from vigilante justice, even though the suspects might be following the
chase on their cellphones.

•London’s Daily Mail reported some inadvertent humor among the errors:

Boston’s
Fox 4 scrolled across the bottom of the screen that the suspect sought
in Watertown was “19-year-old Zooey Deschanel.” Alerted to her new and
unwanted celebrity, Uproxx.com said, the 33-year-old star of the Fox sitcom, New Girl, tweeted, “Whoa! Epic closed captioning FAIL!”

Gawker.com
said NBC anchor Brian Williams cut to New England Cable News for an
update on the Watertown chase and listeners heard an unnamed reporter, “Oh, you’re not listening? Well, I don’t know shit.”

•It’s no surprise that Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post was unmatched for sheer bloodymindedness. Here’s the HuffingtonPost.com summary:

The
Post said 12 people had died, when only three had; it said a Saudi man
was a “suspect” in “custody” when he wasn't; and it splashed pictures of
two young “BAG MEN” on its front page even though it did not know
whether they were suspects. They were innocent. One was 17 years old; he
told the Associated Press that he was “scared to go outside.” And that
doesn’t include Post doctoring the photo of an injured spectator to hide
her leg wound.

Rather than apologize, Murdoch blamed others outside the Post.

•Murdoch’s Post wasn’t alone in falsely accusing men of being bombers. The LA Times said “Reddit is apologizing for its role in fueling the social media witch hunts for the Boston bombings
suspects. The social news website . . . became a place for amateur
sleuths to gather and share their conspiracy theories and other ideas on
who may have committed the crimes. The online witch hunts ended up
dragging in several innocent people, including Sunil Tripathi, a
22-year-old Brown University student who went missing last month (and
has since been found dead).

“After viewing the FBI's
photos of the suspects Thursday, Redditors became convinced that
Tripathi was one of the bombers, with countless posts gleefully pointing
out the physical similarities between Tripathi and Suspect No. 2, who
ended up being 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The
growing wave of suspicion surrounding Tripathi led his family to
release a statement the next day saying they knew ‘unequivocally’ that
their son was not involved.

“On
Monday, Reddit General Manager Erik Martin posted a lengthy apology on
the site, saying the crisis ‘showed the best and worst of Reddit's
potential.’ He said the company, as well as several Reddit users and
moderators, had apologized privately to Tripathi's family and wanted ‘to
take this opportunity to apologize publicly for the pain they have had
to endure. We all need to look at what happened and make sure that in
the future we do everything we can to help and not hinder crisis
situations,’ the post said. ‘Some of the activity on Reddit fueled
online witch hunts and dangerous speculation which spiraled into very
negative consequences for innocent parties. The Reddit staff and the
millions of people on Reddit around the world deeply regret that this
happened’."

Reddit
said it does not allow personal information on the site in order to
protect innocent people from being incorrectly identified and
"disrupting or ruining their lives," according to the LA Times. "We
hoped that the crowdsourced search for new information would not spark
exactly this type of witch hunt. We were wrong," Reddit’s Martin
continued. "The search for the bombers bore less resemblance to the
types of vindictive Internet witch hunts our no-personal-information
rule was originally written for, but the outcome was no different."

The
LA Times added valuable context to what followed the bombings: they “were
the first major terrorist attack on American soil in the age of
Facebook, Twitter
and Reddit. But the watershed moment for social media quickly spiraled
out of control as legions of Web sleuths cast suspicion on the innocent,
shared bad tips and heightened the sense of panic and paranoia.” The
LA Times added that Boston police asked “overeager” Twitter users to
limit what they posted because that overly detailed tweets could
compromise officers' position and safety.

•Detroit
Free Press editors published a detailed online illustration of how to
make a pressure cooker bomb, like that reportedly used by the Boston
bombers. When their brain fart passed, they took down the instructions
and images. Of course, now, anyone can turn to Jimromenesko.com screen shot of the Detroit Free Press illustration . . .

•Newcomers
to the Tri-State puzzle over the lifelong identification with high/prep
school. When a Cincinnatian was involved in the emergency surgical
response to the Boston Marathon bombings, the Enquirer noted he went to
St. X. Only later did Our Sole Surviving Daily tell us he was graduated
from UC’s medical school before going off to Boston for his surgical
residency.

Boston and surrounding communities went through another night of terror and chaos
last night, with the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects allegedly rampaging
through the city just hours after their photos were released to the
public by authorities. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspects, died
after apparently suffering multiple wounds from a police shootout and
what’s now believed to have been an explosion, but his brother, Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev, 19, remains at large while a massive manhunt is underway.
Authorities are telling people in Boston and the surrounding area to
stay indoors as the manhunt continues.

Before approving the budget bill in a 61-35 vote, the Ohio House voted to remove an amendment from the bill that would have banned comprehensive sex education in a 76-19 vote
yesterday, which CityBeat covered in further detail here. Still, the budget bill contains language that would defund Planned Parenthood
and redirect other funding to abstinence-only, anti-abortion crisis
pregnancy centers. The budget bill was also amended to ask for a
Medicaid waiver that give Ohio more time to mull over a Medicaid expansion and could lead to a revamp of the state-backed health care program. The budget bill must now be approved by the Ohio Senate and Gov. John Kasich.

Ohio’s unemployment rate was 7.1 percent in March,
unchanged from February’s revised rate and a small drop from 7.4
percent in March 2012. The number of people unemployed rose by 1,000,
while the amount of people employed dropped by 20,400. March was also a
weak month for the U.S. jobs report, so Ohio’s numbers may be following a
nationwide slowdown. Jobs in manufacturing, mining and logging,
financial activities and trade, transportation and utilities increased,
while other areas dropped by varying degrees.

On the two-year anniversary of his death, the lawsuit for David “Bones” Hebert has been expanded
to include the city of Cincinnati and three Cincinnati
Police officers. Since he was killed by
police in 2011, Bones has built a following that wants to bring what
they perceive as justice to his death.

A state representative announced he will run against
Ohio Sen. Rob Portman in 2016 because of Portman’s vote against a
federal gun control bill. State Rep. Bob Hagan wrote on Facebook,
”Senator Portman shows his lack of courage and testicular fortitude. The
NRA Owns him. I am declaring my candidacy for US Senate to run against
him in the next election. I will be his hair shirt for the next three
years.” A poll from The New York Times and CBS found about 92 percent of Americans support universal background checks, the major policy proposal in the gun control bill.

A new app allows Icelanders to make sure their hookups don’t qualify as accidental incest.

Two explosions at the Boston Marathon yesterdayled to the deaths of at least three and injured at least 140 others,
with the deaths including an 8-year-old boy. So far, it is
unclear who carried out the bombings. Police said the two bombs
were set in trash cans, less than 100 yards apart, near the finish line
of the marathon. Officials said police also found two bombs in different
locations, but they were not set off. At least 134 entrants
from Greater Cincinnati were at the marathon, but none are believed to
be hurt, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.
The bombings were carried out on Patriots’ Day, a Massachusetts-based
holiday that commemorates the first battles of the American Revolution,
and tax day. They were the first major act of terrorism on U.S. soil
since Sept. 11, 2001.

Councilman Cecil Thomas is set to make a major
announcement today at 11:30 a.m. The speculation is that Thomas will
officially announce he’s appointing his wife Pamula Thomas to replace him on City Council — a
move he’s hinted at for a couple months now. Thomas is term limited
from running again in City Council, but appointing his wife to his seat
could give her some credibility and experience to run in November.

Federal sequestration, a series of across-the-board budget cuts at the federal level, is already having an effect on Cincinnati and Ohio,
with cuts taking place for education, housing and the environment. In
Cincinnati, the Cincinnati-Hamilton County Community Action Agency plans
to carry out $1 million in cuts by dropping 200 kids from the Head
Start program, which helps low-income families get their children into
preschool and other early education programs. Wendy Patton, a senior
project director at Policy Matters Ohio, says the cuts are only the “tip
of the iceberg.”

David Pepper, a Democrat who previously served on City
Council and the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners, announced
yesterday that he will run for state attorney general. “I have been traveling
the state for years now listening to working and middle class Ohioans
and it is clear they want a change, a new direction at all levels,”
Pepper said in a statement. “I’m running for Ohio Attorney General
because Ohioans deserve better.” In the statement, Pepper touted his
experience working with law enforcement in Cincinnati and Hamilton
County.

At least seven members of the University of Cincinnati Board of Trustees are asking fellow member Stan Chesley to resign
after Chesley’s permanent disbarment by the Kentucky Supreme Court last
month. A letter to Chesley from his fellow board members cited the
Kentucky Supreme Court ruling, claiming he “engaged in conduct involving
dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.”

Greater Cincinnati housing permits increased by 41
percent in the first quarter of 2013, according to the Home Builders Association of Greater Cincinnati. The numbers are another sign the local economy is quickly recovering from the Great Recession.

Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond

•In a
disturbing decision, public radio’s Radiolab (WVXU-FM 8 p.m. Sundays)
gave Cincinnatian Phil Heimlich critical control over its March 5
program on Phil’s dad, Henry Heimlich.

Phil
arranged the interview with the aging physician, for whom the Heimlich
Maneuver is named. However, producer Pat Walters had to promise to
exclude the voice of Phil’s estranged younger brother, Peter, from any
subsequent broadcast.

Peter is a scathing critic of their father’s therapeutic claims for the Maneuver and more recent medical experiments.

Phil
told Curmudgeon that he feared Walters would ask their father about the
troubled family relationships. “Like any son, I’m somewhat protective
of him,” Phil said. “He’s 93 . . . We don’t let just anybody come up and
interview him.”

Peter told Curmudgeon that he was unaware of this bargain when he cooperated with Walters for the Radiolab story.

I
have no trouble with Phil’s setting conditions for arranging the
interview. My beef is with Radiolab. It could have refused. Similarly,
I’m not going into Heimlich’s therapeutic theories and claims; I’m
writing about Radiolab’s handling of the story.

I’m
troubled by Radiolab’s willingness to silence an important critic and a
source of its information in exchange for access to the elder Heimlich.
Further, if Walters failed to tell Peter about his deal with Phil,
that’s unethical, especially since Walters told Peter, “I want you to
speak for yourself.”

Peter
elaborated in a recent email to Curmudgeon: “I was first approached by
Radiolab last August when they asked to interview me for broadcast. I
wasn't informed that, five months earlier, they'd cut the censorship
deal, so they obtained my interview under false pretenses. Further, in
the following months, Radiolab producer Pat Walters took up hours of my
time, encouraging me to provide him with information and documents. I
only learned about the censorship deal a couple weeks ago, when the
program disclosed it on their website. If I'd known that Radiolab was
this underhanded, I wouldn't have given them a minute of my time -- and
I'd encourage other sources to keep their distance.”

Over the years, Peter has dealt with lots of reporters. I asked, "Have you encountered this kind of deal before?"

Peter responded, “I've never heard of a deal like this . . . and how many other Radiolab stories have included deals like this?”

Radiolab’s
website includes a link to the 25-minute program, including the
interview with Heimlich. Radiolab’s website text says:

“In
the 1970s, choking became national news: thousands were choking to
death, leading to more accidental deaths than guns. Nobody knew what to
do. Until a man named Henry Heimlich came along with a big idea. Since
then, thousands and thousands — maybe even millions — have been
rescued by the Heimlich maneuver. Yet the story of the man who invented
it may not have such a happy ending.

“Producer
Pat Walters wouldn't be here without the Heimlich maneuver — it saved
his life when he was just 11 years old. And one day he started wondering
- who was Heimlich, anyway? And how did he come up with his choking
remedy? Pat had always kinda assumed Heimlich died in the mid-1800s. Not
so. The man is very much alive: he's 93 years old, and calls
Cincinnati, Ohio, home.”

Given
the conflict of interest, letting choking survivor Walters do the
interview was a mistake. Here are the guts of Radiolab’s online
Producer’s Note:

“We made some minor changes to this story that do not alter the substance.

“(W)e
removed the audio of Peter Heimlich, Henry Heimlich’s son, from the
version now on the site. When we approached Henry’s other son Phil to
arrange an interview with his father, one of Phil’s conditions was that
we not air audio of Peter. We thought he’d waived that provision in a
subsequent conversation but he contends he did not. So we are honoring
the original request.”

The
version available online begins with a light-hearted exchange among
Radiolab personalities in their WNYC studio of New York Public Radio.
The conversation between Walters and Henry Heimlich at Heimlich’s home
maintains that chummy tone.

Then
Walters shifts to controversies over Heimlich’s Maneuver to resuscitate
drowning victims and other medical theories. Walters also interviews
experts who disagree with Heimlich. When Walters lets Heimlich speak
for himself, the physician accuses critics of jealousy and
self-interest.

Walters
lets the American Red Cross explain why it (quietly) abandoned decades
of support for the Maneuver as the first response to choking and
returned common backslaps.

“Nonsense,” Heimlich responded.

The
Red Cross also abandoned Heimlich’s name for its maneuver. Now, it’s
“abdominal thrusts.” Heimlich says abdominal thrusts are not the same as
his Maneuver and he’s offended by the whole affair.

Peter — who provided emails from which I worked — continues to press Radiolab
on its decision to erase his voice from its broadcast. Its latest
response refers him to the program’s original online statements.

•Stunning,
avoidable reporting mistakes followed the Boston Marathon bombing. They
began when the New York Post said a Saudi man was hospitalized, under
guardand might be a bomber. Days later, as the hunt ended, CNN said
the captured younger suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was driven away by
police. CNN said Tsarnaev was not wounded or his wounds were so slight
that no ambulance was required. Wrong. He left in an ambulance; his
wounds were so serious that it was unclear when he would speak to
interrogators or appear in court.

•Was
there a gun battle after a Watertown resident saw the wounded man in
his boat and called police? Some media say no gun was found or the
19-year-old didn’t shoot.

•Speaking of mistakes, Businessinsider.com
described another blunder when reporters didn’t name sources or verify
leaks. “According to a source at CNN, the network was the first to
report that a suspect had been identified. Anchor John King sent in a
report around 1 p.m. that a source ‘briefed’ on the investigation had
told King a positive identification had been made. CNN Washington bureau
chief Sam Feist approved that report, according to the source.

“According
to the source, who was reviewing internal email logs, Fran Townsend was
the first at the network to say that an arrest had been made. ‘As I
think everyone knows, we really fucked up. No way around it,’ the source
said.

“The
source said that the network's email network went quiet for a 15-minute
period shortly after the retraction — ‘so people [were] either being
more cautious or getting yelled at.’

“Townsend's
report came around the same time as other outlets, including the
Associated Press and the Boston Globe, also reported an arrest, so it is
not clear whether CNN was the first to make the mistake . . .
Wednesday's false arrest reports also drew a scathing rebuke from the FBI,
which urged the press ‘to exercise caution and attempt to verify
information through appropriate official channels before reporting’."

This
is shabby journalism. CNN went with a report attributed to someone who
had been briefed by someone who knew something. No names. No
identifiable links to investigation. Simply assertions. We could have
waited until CNN verified or debunked the report but editors fear that
hesitation can drive viewers to other, less scrupulous sources. At least
Businessinsider.com appeared accurate in its use of its unnamed CNN sources.

•Social
media — better called anti-social media in the aftermath of the
marathon bombings - spread so much misinformation and falsely accused so
many young men that the FBI had to release images of its suspects: the Tsarnaev brothers. It was the only way to protect wrongly accused men
from vigilante justice, even though the suspects might be following the
chase on their cellphones.

•London’s Daily Mail reported some inadvertent humor among the errors:

Boston’s
Fox 4 scrolled across the bottom of the screen that the suspect sought
in Watertown was “19-year-old Zooey Deschanel.” Alerted to her new and
unwanted celebrity, Uproxx.com said, the 33-year-old star of the Fox sitcom, New Girl, tweeted, “Whoa! Epic closed captioning FAIL!”

Gawker.com
said NBC anchor Brian Williams cut to New England Cable News for an
update on the Watertown chase and listeners heard an unnamed reporter, “Oh, you’re not listening? Well, I don’t know shit.”

•It’s no surprise that Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post was unmatched for sheer bloodymindedness. Here’s the HuffingtonPost.com summary:

The
Post said 12 people had died, when only three had; it said a Saudi man
was a “suspect” in “custody” when he wasn't; and it splashed pictures of
two young “BAG MEN” on its front page even though it did not know
whether they were suspects. They were innocent. One was 17 years old; he
told the Associated Press that he was “scared to go outside.” And that
doesn’t include Post doctoring the photo of an injured spectator to hide
her leg wound.

Rather than apologize, Murdoch blamed others outside the Post.

•Murdoch’s Post wasn’t alone in falsely accusing men of being bombers. The LA Times said “Reddit is apologizing for its role in fueling the social media witch hunts for the Boston bombings
suspects. The social news website . . . became a place for amateur
sleuths to gather and share their conspiracy theories and other ideas on
who may have committed the crimes. The online witch hunts ended up
dragging in several innocent people, including Sunil Tripathi, a
22-year-old Brown University student who went missing last month (and
has since been found dead).

“After viewing the FBI's
photos of the suspects Thursday, Redditors became convinced that
Tripathi was one of the bombers, with countless posts gleefully pointing
out the physical similarities between Tripathi and Suspect No. 2, who
ended up being 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The
growing wave of suspicion surrounding Tripathi led his family to
release a statement the next day saying they knew ‘unequivocally’ that
their son was not involved.

“On
Monday, Reddit General Manager Erik Martin posted a lengthy apology on
the site, saying the crisis ‘showed the best and worst of Reddit's
potential.’ He said the company, as well as several Reddit users and
moderators, had apologized privately to Tripathi's family and wanted ‘to
take this opportunity to apologize publicly for the pain they have had
to endure. We all need to look at what happened and make sure that in
the future we do everything we can to help and not hinder crisis
situations,’ the post said. ‘Some of the activity on Reddit fueled
online witch hunts and dangerous speculation which spiraled into very
negative consequences for innocent parties. The Reddit staff and the
millions of people on Reddit around the world deeply regret that this
happened’."

Reddit
said it does not allow personal information on the site in order to
protect innocent people from being incorrectly identified and
"disrupting or ruining their lives," according to the LA Times. "We
hoped that the crowdsourced search for new information would not spark
exactly this type of witch hunt. We were wrong," Reddit’s Martin
continued. "The search for the bombers bore less resemblance to the
types of vindictive Internet witch hunts our no-personal-information
rule was originally written for, but the outcome was no different."

The
LA Times added valuable context to what followed the bombings: they “were
the first major terrorist attack on American soil in the age of
Facebook, Twitter
and Reddit. But the watershed moment for social media quickly spiraled
out of control as legions of Web sleuths cast suspicion on the innocent,
shared bad tips and heightened the sense of panic and paranoia.” The
LA Times added that Boston police asked “overeager” Twitter users to
limit what they posted because that overly detailed tweets could
compromise officers' position and safety.

•Detroit
Free Press editors published a detailed online illustration of how to
make a pressure cooker bomb, like that reportedly used by the Boston
bombers. When their brain fart passed, they took down the instructions
and images. Of course, now, anyone can turn to Jimromenesko.com screen shot of the Detroit Free Press illustration . . .

•Newcomers
to the Tri-State puzzle over the lifelong identification with high/prep
school. When a Cincinnatian was involved in the emergency surgical
response to the Boston Marathon bombings, the Enquirer noted he went to
St. X. Only later did Our Sole Surviving Daily tell us he was graduated
from UC’s medical school before going off to Boston for his surgical
residency.

Boston and surrounding communities went through another night of terror and chaos
last night, with the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects allegedly rampaging
through the city just hours after their photos were released to the
public by authorities. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspects, died
after apparently suffering multiple wounds from a police shootout and
what’s now believed to have been an explosion, but his brother, Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev, 19, remains at large while a massive manhunt is underway.
Authorities are telling people in Boston and the surrounding area to
stay indoors as the manhunt continues.

Before approving the budget bill in a 61-35 vote, the Ohio House voted to remove an amendment from the bill that would have banned comprehensive sex education in a 76-19 vote
yesterday, which CityBeat covered in further detail here. Still, the budget bill contains language that would defund Planned Parenthood
and redirect other funding to abstinence-only, anti-abortion crisis
pregnancy centers. The budget bill was also amended to ask for a
Medicaid waiver that give Ohio more time to mull over a Medicaid expansion and could lead to a revamp of the state-backed health care program. The budget bill must now be approved by the Ohio Senate and Gov. John Kasich.

Ohio’s unemployment rate was 7.1 percent in March,
unchanged from February’s revised rate and a small drop from 7.4
percent in March 2012. The number of people unemployed rose by 1,000,
while the amount of people employed dropped by 20,400. March was also a
weak month for the U.S. jobs report, so Ohio’s numbers may be following a
nationwide slowdown. Jobs in manufacturing, mining and logging,
financial activities and trade, transportation and utilities increased,
while other areas dropped by varying degrees.

On the two-year anniversary of his death, the lawsuit for David “Bones” Hebert has been expanded
to include the city of Cincinnati and three Cincinnati
Police officers. Since he was killed by
police in 2011, Bones has built a following that wants to bring what
they perceive as justice to his death.

A state representative announced he will run against
Ohio Sen. Rob Portman in 2016 because of Portman’s vote against a
federal gun control bill. State Rep. Bob Hagan wrote on Facebook,
”Senator Portman shows his lack of courage and testicular fortitude. The
NRA Owns him. I am declaring my candidacy for US Senate to run against
him in the next election. I will be his hair shirt for the next three
years.” A poll from The New York Times and CBS found about 92 percent of Americans support universal background checks, the major policy proposal in the gun control bill.

A new app allows Icelanders to make sure their hookups don’t qualify as accidental incest.

Two explosions at the Boston Marathon yesterdayled to the deaths of at least three and injured at least 140 others,
with the deaths including an 8-year-old boy. So far, it is
unclear who carried out the bombings. Police said the two bombs
were set in trash cans, less than 100 yards apart, near the finish line
of the marathon. Officials said police also found two bombs in different
locations, but they were not set off. At least 134 entrants
from Greater Cincinnati were at the marathon, but none are believed to
be hurt, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.
The bombings were carried out on Patriots’ Day, a Massachusetts-based
holiday that commemorates the first battles of the American Revolution,
and tax day. They were the first major act of terrorism on U.S. soil
since Sept. 11, 2001.

Councilman Cecil Thomas is set to make a major
announcement today at 11:30 a.m. The speculation is that Thomas will
officially announce he’s appointing his wife Pamula Thomas to replace him on City Council — a
move he’s hinted at for a couple months now. Thomas is term limited
from running again in City Council, but appointing his wife to his seat
could give her some credibility and experience to run in November.

Federal sequestration, a series of across-the-board budget cuts at the federal level, is already having an effect on Cincinnati and Ohio,
with cuts taking place for education, housing and the environment. In
Cincinnati, the Cincinnati-Hamilton County Community Action Agency plans
to carry out $1 million in cuts by dropping 200 kids from the Head
Start program, which helps low-income families get their children into
preschool and other early education programs. Wendy Patton, a senior
project director at Policy Matters Ohio, says the cuts are only the “tip
of the iceberg.”

David Pepper, a Democrat who previously served on City
Council and the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners, announced
yesterday that he will run for state attorney general. “I have been traveling
the state for years now listening to working and middle class Ohioans
and it is clear they want a change, a new direction at all levels,”
Pepper said in a statement. “I’m running for Ohio Attorney General
because Ohioans deserve better.” In the statement, Pepper touted his
experience working with law enforcement in Cincinnati and Hamilton
County.

At least seven members of the University of Cincinnati Board of Trustees are asking fellow member Stan Chesley to resign
after Chesley’s permanent disbarment by the Kentucky Supreme Court last
month. A letter to Chesley from his fellow board members cited the
Kentucky Supreme Court ruling, claiming he “engaged in conduct involving
dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.”

Greater Cincinnati housing permits increased by 41
percent in the first quarter of 2013, according to the Home Builders Association of Greater Cincinnati. The numbers are another sign the local economy is quickly recovering from the Great Recession.